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Why Online Dating (Still) Sucks, and a Simple Attempt at Fixing It

127 points by krausejj 15y ago

jquery 15y ago
Online dating does more than reduce "Hi, my name is" friction, it also allows you to find people who have rare attributes and personality traits you desire in a partner, before you make the commitment to spend money/time on a first date. Lists of interests and questionnaires are exactly what online dating does right and moving to Facebook would be a step backwards. EDIT: In other words, my Facebook profile is not a dating profile.
mhartl 15y ago
Am I missing anything? You're missing at least two things. Assuming (as is reasonable) that you're principally aiming at the heterosexual market, you face these issues: 1. Men and women are different. How do you address gender imbalances? 2. Not all women are equally appealing. How do you address attractive women being overwhelmed with male attention? Some may object that I didn't include "attractive men" in #2. See #1. In particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed with female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy it.)
- krausejj 15y ago
  interesting. i've read studies on how men are much more likely to make a decision on an online profile based mainly upon the photo, whereas women care more about interests and other content. this is definitely something to consider. I do feel like the public Facebook profile gives women some interesting information - mutual friends, education, and basic interests are all there. also, this is not principally aimed at heterosexuals - all orientations are welcome and i actually suspect that smaller groups like gay guys may find it more useful since these communities are smaller and filtering out current friends is more valuable.
- jessriedel 15y ago
  > In particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed with female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy it.) This is really interesting if true (which I think it probably is) because real life is the opposite, at least if you measure by sexual partners: by definition, the average number of partners for men and women (in a heterosexual population) is the same, but it turns out that the variance for men is much larger; a few many get many women and most men get few, while most women get a typical number of men.
  - mhartl 15y ago
    You've got the wrong metric. The reason some men have lots of sexual partners is because many men want lots of sexual partners, and some have the ability to do so. On the other hand, most women of even mediocre attractiveness can have lots of sexual partners, but fewer of them want to. This is just as you would expect based on the relative energy investment men and women make in producing offspring. Other animals with similar asymmetries in energy investment have similar sexual behavior to humans. Incidentally, this observation puts the lie to the idea that having a stud/slut dichotomy is a "double standard". Having different standards for men and women makes sense; being a stud is hard, while being a slut is easy. Indeed, the vast majority of whining about "gender double standards" can be rebutted with the simple observation that men and women are different.
valladont 15y ago
Really not interested in having to put my sexual and relationship ideals up on facebook where friends and family can see them... Facebook is where I go to talk to people I do not want knowing a lot about my personal life.
- ncavig 15y ago
  Very good point. In addition, so many things cannot be represented digitally in dating/flirting. So much body language and unspoken signals go into reading of interest and intrigue between two people. Albeit my knowledge of dating sites are limited, it would seem being able to replicate unspoken communication is nearly impossible, especially when people are represented as images and text. Sorry for no citations, just a personal opinion based off of my history of reading a limited number of psych and body language books
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- krausejj 15y ago
  This isn't how it works - it connects with Facebook so it can filter out your Facebook friends - the whole idea is that only new people who you don't know can see that you're single and looking to connect.
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    Except mutual friends see that you're now connected? I don't want Facebook touching my dating life, ever.
  - valladont 15y ago
    This app connects to my facebook to check my friends and stuff, then I tell this app the stuff I am into sexually and romantically, and then it connects me to others on facebook who have the same interests, I get that. But the simple fact is, well, keep my romantic life out of my social life. If I want my romantic life and social life to intermix that will be my decision, not that of some webapp. There is a reason Dating Sites exist separated from Social Sites, and it is not because no one has thought of the idea before. Personal Preference: Ne'er the twain shall meet. Just to be clear, it is a good idea, but I personally would not trust that small a level of separation between social and romantic life. There may be a market in it, I am not a member of that demographic.
krausejj 15y ago
if anyone has any feedback - especially with regard to user acquisition or how to make this more viral, i'd really appreciate your ideas.
- LokiSnake 15y ago
  You're implementation still feels like a slight twist on what we've seen before. You list criteria which are used as filters, and you either show interest or don't. OKCupid is pretty much the same thing. Sure, you take away the profile filling, and uploading photos part, but it's still the same thing, but slightly different. Thing is, after a match is found, you don't solve the "well shit, what do I do now?" problem. You're back to awkward and possibly creepy part of messaging and setting something up. I remember seeing a very interesting idea for a dating website a while ago on HN, where you're matched based on activities/events you're interested in going to. I really liked the idea, as it matches based on interests, and it automatically answers the what-are-we-going-to-do question.
  - natrius 15y ago
    Maybe this was the site you heard about: http://www.howaboutwe.com/ http://www.howaboutwe.com/ They've been doing a significant blast of advertising lately.
- mmatants 15y ago
  Some interesting ideas, for sure. I agree with the concept of streamlining things. But I strongly oppose the requirement of real-names-only. It should be possible to use FB for authentication/etc, but still maintain anonymity within the "matching pool". I think that this is the main issue with any online-based communication: it is an awful attempt to approximate talking to a person in real life. As a middle-ground solution, I think match sites should basically arrange for online games/experiences that show a person's reactions to things. That's how one truly shows their personality. I don't mean games in a traditional sense, either. Maybe rounds of some kind of live trivia with a twist, or whatever. So basically, nothing new. Just usual meet-market ideas, translated better into online-only experience. And of course the overall thing, too, is that it should be fun. The real goal is to enjoy the process, just like with meeting people in real life. It's so much better to just have fun with the overall journey of social interaction, rather than labour towards an abstract goal of filling a "mate" placeholder slot.
kristenlee 15y ago
The facebook thing is an absolute dealbreaker, what don't engineers understand about people not wanting to use facebook for everything? So annoying. If you want people to use real identities there are plenty of other ways to go about it, furthermore it is not that difficult to create a fake facebook profile, i have three myself.
- jfarmer 15y ago
  Are you kidding? Engineers are one of the most privacy-conscious demos out there, especially under 30. Just read any post on HN about any site that uses Facebook Connect. Half the comments will be about how they refuse to so much as look at that button. I disagree that going full-on-public is the right approach. For women, especially, they get bombarded with all kinds of creepiness. I think it'd be hard to get people to waive their right to hand out information at the pace they feel comfortable. Anything that alienates women from a dating site is a deal-breaker, IMO. The dating sites that do well are the ones that can attract and retain female users. That said, there's a kernel of an interesting idea here. The process of dating is revealing increasingly intimate details about ones life. If you reach a point where it feels uncomfortable, you break up. For the "online" portion of online dating, e.g., sending messages back and forth on OKC, this is very explicit. Guy sends girl a message. Girl responds. Guy reveals name. Girl reveals name. etc. Until eventually contact information is exchanged, and then you arrange an offline date. So the "core" problem of online dating is one of building comfort. One Facebook-powered feature that could build comfort might be to show how many friends you have in common (but not who). Another might be to show where your Facebook likes intersect. But forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really runs against the grain of the whole idea of dating.
  - krausejj 15y ago
    regarding "forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really runs against the grain of the whole idea of dating" -- in most cases, the public Facebook profile is hardly "all my information," and sites like OKCupid that do online dating the "traditional" way are already out there. this is an alternative - for people who want to try going against the grain.
therandomguy 15y ago
I wonder if people will find dating and facebook too close for comfort.
kanwisher 15y ago
The list of reasons doesn't seem well thought out, rejection is part of the dating experience, I would think its much worse in real life when someone ignores you then simply just not responding to an email. I really wouldnt want to tie this to facebook for the reason of stalkers and weirdos now have personal contact with me. I would prefer to keep my dating life seperate.
Vermeulen 15y ago
I think this is pretty brilliant, the ease of use and simplicity - but the fundamental problem is the requirement on Facebook. Even if your not posting on user's wall trying to spread the site I think people will still be hesitant to connect their Facebook profile to a dating site, Facebook is just too personal for something that most people would prefer to be done anonymously. Not that there is anyway around that, since Facebook gives so many other benefits for this idea
phzbOx 15y ago
Every time I pitch startup ideas to my gf, she always tells me it sucks and gives me great reasons.. but the other day, I had this idea about dating website and she kinda liked it even though she would never want me to work on something like that. Instead of trying to use the Internet to solve a problem that is better solved in real-life (i.e. meet people and talk), why not create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. Basically, it's a game where you put the profile picture you'd like to have, and the 'about me' you'd like to be. So, you talk with lots of strangers and avoid the awkard thingy while still having fun and meeting people. Of course, after some time, it will naturally start to be more intimate and it'd be possible to share more real stuff.. but that's not even necessary. Think about all the guys and girls in couple who'd like to have fun dating again but can't because they're already in relationship? Or single players who just want to have fun? Here it is. It's rough around the edges but I hope it inspire someone.
- juiceandjuice 15y ago
  I hated playing The Sims.
- sanswork 15y ago
  Sounds like secondlife.
- lsb 15y ago
  That sounds like a pretty cool idea, create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. People have implemented that in meat-space as the city of San Francisco. If people find that the rest of their life tugs on them, perhaps you could sell an all-in-one escape month? It'd be perfect for the baby boomer who wants to try one month at not being the same person. Just take care of all necessary daily/weekly/monthly chores for a month. (Obvious expansion into doing people's chores for them, pairing with tourism boards, etc.)
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "Instead of trying to use the Internet to solve a problem that is better solved in real-life (i.e. meet people and talk), why not create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. Basically, it's a game where you put the profile picture you'd like to have, and the 'about me' you'd like to be. So, you talk with lots of strangers and avoid the awkard thingy while still having fun and meeting people." This might work for an online game, but not for dating. I've used many of major online dating sites over the years and one of the things that bothers me the most is people mis-representing themselves. It usually leads to awkward situations and hurt feelings. This is why I try to get a phone number and meet in person as soon as possible. Your game would have this built-in and only make the situation worse (as far as dating goes).
shalmanese 15y ago
Here's the real reason why online dating sucks: 1. The only good sites are the ones your potential mate is on. Size is a bigger feature than any you can design. 2. If your site sucks, then people get frustrated and everyone leaves. If your site is great, then people get paired off and everyone leaves. Online dating doesn't just suffer from network effects, it suffers from second order network effects. Unless you're getting a constant stream of new customers into your site every day, your site will fail. All innovation in online dating comes from the customer acquisition side, not the product side. If you manage to figure out an innovative new form of customer acquisition, you can make a go at creating a viable new entrant to the market. If you can't, it doesn't matter how good your product is, you will fail.
- krausejj 15y ago
  fascinating, thanks for this insight. this rings very true. do you have any good ideas for customer acquisition? my only devil's advocate response would be that if a site delivers very well and people start hearing about people who successfully met on that site (and there isn't a stigma admitting it), then this could drive new users....
  - gbhn 15y ago
    crawl facebook?
    - krausejj 15y ago
      this is actually pretty tough. facebook has really tightened things up with regards to privacy and it's api - certainly a good thing for users but you'll notice you rarely see apps all over people's walls like a few years back - it is much harder to do and always requires onerous permissions.
- unawz 15y ago
  There's a solution to that problem - peer to peer - as in file-sharing. Create software that sits on each persons computer. This is freely downloadable. Users input as much information as they want into it, and it reaches out and grabs other users' data like file-sharing, and filters it to any sort of criteria. This solves the chicken and egg problem. People can make money on this by offering hosting services. It can be a hassle for the average user to run and update the software on their computer so many might opt to pay for a cloud service. This model can also be used for business discovery. Google and ebay can only do so much, you might want complex querying and reporting. edit: The software solution can be as simple as publishing rdf data. The Protege ontology editor (open source) is already available. Users could simply start publishing their data profile right away, and conventions would form around what you should be putting in it. Protege also has querying facilities built in already. This was actually the semantic web vision.
LaGrange 15y ago
Real names? Never. It's way too easy to get a stalker even if you're initially anonymous. It would be just dangerous to use a dating site like that, especially once you add that location function into it. Messages are a pretty important part of the online dating thing. Same thing with profiles. How someone reacted to your profile, how someone presents themselves, all that is really important when looking for people you'd like to talk with. And, personally, I have written quite a few messages on OKC, and never a canned one. Even if someone didn't answer, I hope I provided a bit of entertainment or amusement. Now, the fact that OKC does thing like showing you profiles of people across the globe even if they're not interested with interacting with someone they might never meet – that's annoying.
sudoscience 15y ago
My best advice is to reword the filtering section. The fact that you need to outline in red that it might work differently than people expect is a good clue that it is too hard to understand. Other than that I think this is really nicely done and a great idea. However, apparently there are no 20-40 year old girls in Seattle yet. :)
m0nastic 15y ago
The rash of online dating startups always strikes me as a misguided use of people's efforts. I can appreciate that people think there's something they can contribute to it, and that they see it as a really positive win for social interaction (and I think people should work on what they want to work on). But the thing is, dating sucks. Full stop. And online dating is merely trying to slightly reduce the friction for the very tiniest part at the very beginning of it. It seems to miss the whole fundamental reason why online dating is hard, which is that dating is hard, and not easily abstracted. Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people.
- maratd 15y ago
  > Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people. Bingo. Now, here's an interesting question. If you're a profit seeking entity that charges monthly rates for introducing people and you want to increase your take, how do you do it? You need to keep them wanting to meet more people. As in, you do not want them to find somebody they really like or they'll no longer want to meet other people. In other words, there is a huge profit motive for you to keep the experience mediocre. Not terrible enough for you to leave, but also not great enough for you to leave with someone you like. There is a huge motive for mediocrity. BTW I met my wife who is sitting next to me, pregnant with our first kid, on an online dating site. It took me two years and about a hundred first dates. That's after using every filtering mechanism provided to me by the site. It was an avalanche of mediocrity. Good enough to keep you going, but bad enough to keep going.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    Sheesh, that's a first date every weekend for two years. Sounds like a side job more than anything else!
    - mahyarm 15y ago
      The idea is to try to schedule a date nearly every night, except the special D&D night or whatever special event. Women flake enough that you'll have nights to yourself, and you'll appreciate it!
leeb 15y ago
> You see real names This would be a complete dealbreaker for me, even without all the other things that this service would share from my profile. I would never want there to be an easy way for people from the dating site to be able to find me on another site - you can shut down a dating profile or discontinuing using the service if someone's bothering you, but with this it sounds like complete strangers would be able to find/message me on Facebook outside of the site's control, and I wouldn't want to stop using Facebook because of some creeper. And if it's using publicly available Facebook data, it means I need to make a ton of my information public and accessible for the service to be useful. That's not really worth the risk of using the service to me, and is probably why you don't frequently see dating sites that reveal full names/near-exact locations as you're suggesting. If you can find a way to display Facebook profile details without revealing the person's full name, you'd probably have more luck recruiting people.
- krausejj 15y ago
  Essentially, the only data available given the "basic" settings on Facebook is name and friends. Your name is already out there all over Facebook - friends of friends, random people in groups you're part of, people going to your events - they can all see it... why is it different to give your real name to a (real) person who matches very specific criteria that you set yourself, and which basically just signifies "I'm Single, and you may be a match" ?
  - xp84 15y ago
    > Your name is already out there all over Facebook - friends of friends, random people in groups you're part of Yeah, and even that exposure can be a pile of hurt when it comes to stalkers, creeps and weirdos. I have to say I don't see the value in real names being visible to people on the dating site unless I choose to share that. The site should let you choose a pseudonym, full stop. This said, I don't rule out the idea of signing up for this site. But I'm a male, so I don't have nearly the level of concern as women do, and rightfully so. There are creeps who devote way too much effort to tracking down chicks and harassing them--or worse. It's sickening.
  - 15y ago
stevenj 15y ago
The dating space is interesting. I think it's ripe for disruption. But thus far I haven't been able to figure out how to attack it, let alone where to start. I think YC was right when it said you have to concentrate on solving the chicken-and-egg problem. "...anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem." If you're passionate about building an online dating site, I'd spend all of my time iterating ways to get users. Try a bunch of different ideas. And fail fast. #8 http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
- xp84 15y ago
  Yeah but on a dating site with 20 users you could conceivably bang EVERY GIRL ON THE SITE! Achievement Unlocked! ;)
  - fatjokes 15y ago
    On a site with 20 users, they'd probably all be male.
- unawz 15y ago
  My other comment about peer-to-peer solves the chicken and egg problem.
krausejj 15y ago
the male to female ratio on Circl.es just swung wildly towards the males since launching on HN (it had been primarily female). hacker girls - you have very good odds right now!
- jarek 15y ago
  Hacker girls have been unsuccessfully looking for online dating sites with "very good odds" forever, to be sure.
jtokoph 15y ago
I love the bashing of this idea in the comments. Everyone saying that they wouldn't want to use a website like this. What they don't realize is that the simple choice of which service they use can act as a filter. For instance: I wouldn't want to date you privacy freaks and you wouldn't want to date me. Already filtered down the sea of singles by just signing up.
theblogdoctor 15y ago
Hey Kraus, I checked out circl.es, nice clean look, but 1st impressions, in 2 seconds, is that it is a travel site. Because all I see is buildings and maps. No faces :( If you are building a dating site, at the very least, you need a few faces, and "last login" "2 minutes ago" "yesterday" etc....
iza 15y ago
I'm slightly offended that you combined Socialist with Fascist in the political views section.
- Robin_Message 15y ago
  (This is off-topic, and I see how it is slightly offensive, but the biggest Fascist party, the Nazis, called themselves "National Socialists". And in terms of the effects — for example, the gulags, war-like nature and authoritarian rule, they appear quite similar. Now I assume you are the good kind of socialist, that wants good for all (e.g. modern Europe), rather than bad kind (e.g. the USSR), (and I agree with you) so I can see why you would want to distance yourself from the Fascists, but historically they are similar.) On topic: Can I expect more or less dates if I put my political views as Fascist...?
- krausejj 15y ago
  I agree that this should be changed. I will look into it!
swang 15y ago
First off, you need women on your dating site. That's it. Just like bars, you don't need to target guys, they will just go where the women also are. I'm not a girl, but the top reasons that I hear about from girls in regards to online dating. 1) there's still a stigma about online dating that some girls won't get over. 2) too many "creeps" who message them. 3) they fear they are getting "played" or are getting a message from someone who just spams the same message. 4) they get way too many messages to sort through. In fact most girls try to set up filters, "Don't message me if you can't spell or if you don't know the difference between, 'your' and 'you're'". Honestly though I find it hard to believe that girls are that concerned with spelling. I, as a guy, have to deal with having to prove to girls that I'm not creepy, or spamming message, and on top of that have to message them something to catch their attention. Personally, it's even worse for me when the girl has nothing at all in her profile for me to ask them about. So what I suggest is, automatically filter out "hey whats up gurl" messages for women. Conversely also filter out any messages that are more than 2 paragraphs in length. Show women pictures and have them rate the pictures by whether or not they would date said person then algorithmically find people on the site that look similar to pictures she favored. I'm trying to think of some more, but basically make it easier for girls to filter out people they would never date. And somehow make it easier for the guy to know that the girl has some interest in him, besides weird, "winks" and icebreakers.
- minikomi 15y ago
  How about a site where guys / girls set up challenges that guys have to perform in order to be able to contact them? * Write a 250 word essay about your favorite british guitar pop * Make a video of you cooking something using pumpkin (my favorite) * Write me a song using the words panda and musk rat, and about Michigan (bonus points for name dropping the coffee shop with the best cheesecake in town - you'll know it if you've been) etc.
  - fatbat 15y ago
    Hmmm I like this idea. Are there any that implements this so far? Maybe something I can look into. :)
- 15y ago
unobfuscate 15y ago
My advice, make the facebook connect a feature, not a requirement. I know this is no simple change, but you would get a lot of buy-in if you sell it as a value add. "Setup your account! Don't want your friends to see your profile? click here! Want to see more people? Click here!" So people connected through facebook can see everyone (minus their friends), and people who aren't can only see others who are not. Keep pushing them on facebook connect, when they do a search, tell them how many people they are missing out on! (3 results, 98 results if you click here!)
nhashem 15y ago
Online dating is a sausagefest. It's the biggest sausagefest ever. I'm not basing this on any scientific or quantitative information at all, just my own personal experiences from online dating from 2004-2008, the end of which was when I met my now-fiancee. The "sausagefest syndrome" is inherently why so many online dating sites suck. Guys sign up and get barely any responses to their profiles or messages. Girls sign up and get immediately overwhelmed with messages, some interesting but the rest mostly boring or creepy. Guys get frustrated at the lack of traction and leave. Girls get overwhelmed by too much attention and leave. It doesn't help when the online dating sites start using fake profiles and pictures to give the false illusion it's not a sausagefest. I've seen friends sign up for Match.com and be like, "this sucks, they have no matches for me," and then I find they're looking for half-Asian half-Russian college-educated non-smoking dog-owners in a 2.5 mile radius, or something like that. That's almost guaranteed to not work. Unfortunately the alternative is some sort of "shotgun strategy," which if done poorly, means sending a message to 50 girls with the same copy-pasted canned sentences, which only contributes to the women being overwhelmed. You still need to aim the shotgun. I effectively had a routine where I'd spend an evening looking through profiles, only ruling out absolute deal-breakers, and then sent a message that while mostly short, at least made some reference to the actual girl. Out of 20 messages I'd get like 5 responses, which would lead to 2 phone calls, and probably 1 actual date. Rinse, repeat. Yeah, it's kind of annoying to fill out a profile and all that, but to me that's never been the problem. I feel there's a lot more social friction to get women to sign up for these sites, because while online dating to guys is basically, "well, why not, it's another possible way to meet girls," to girls it's, "this is admitting I am incompetent at/undeserving of finding love." Until that's overcome, online dating will always be a poor experience for a lot of people that try it. How do you overcome it? In a drunken night with friends a couple months ago, I started rambling about an online dating site that embraced the male-female disparity, and basically would pair up something like 3-4 guys to every girl, and set up dates where you'd all go out like "The Bachelorette." There's a lot of reasons why that idea would be a hard sell, but if anyone ever does successfully do it, just make sure to give me my cut[0]. [0] http://xkcd.com/827/ http://xkcd.com/827/
- jeromegn 15y ago
  I was surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article because this is, to me, the biggest issue with dating sites: too many guys, too many messages to women. I've seen some of my friends (women) sign up and get messages within an hour. Even with a barely filled profile.
donall 15y ago
A minor point: when filling out my political orientation, I noticed that "socialist/fascist" was an option. I really don't want to start a debate, but I think these should be separate. It seems in the US they are often both considered equally dangerous extremes, but in the rest of the world, there is a pretty significant distinction between the two camps.
- krausejj 15y ago
  maybe just change it to socialist only?
- itmag 15y ago
  Yeah, that made me chuckle. The USA is pretty quaint sometimes. Then again, to us euros, all Americans are worldview-challenged religious fundamentalists who mock dying poor people in the streets while brandishing an Uzi in one hand and a quadruple cheeseburger in the other. So it goes both ways.
discountgenius 15y ago
I had a very, very similar idea (but with more facebook integration) less than two weeks ago. I'm glad it's already built. Now we just need some girls to join...
MBlume 15y ago
I don't understand why you're so determined to hide my friends. I like my friends. I might conceivably want to date some of them, and in any case, I'd like to show them my profile for con-crit. Is there a way to turn the "feature" off?
- krausejj 15y ago
  I considered that but I figured if you already know someone and like them, you should just ask them out in person.
kingkawn 15y ago
I've had a pretty good experience with Internet dating. I've met a lot of women, become really good friends with some, had brief flings and long term girlfriends. They all are deluged with messages from creeps, but that really shouldn't impact men who aren't creeps. Many reject me, but who cares? That's true in general. I dont want life to be softer on me, I just want to go HAM on life. If you're not satisfied with the Internet hit the grocery store checkout line.
tsunamifury 15y ago
I can never get over the fact that online dating will always be a very distant second to meeting people in real life. Why don't more sites stop trying to force some artificial romance virtually and study how to get groups of people to meet in person and foster relationships.
prawn 15y ago
I have an idea in this space that I'd be keen to get feedback on. Have only ever seen one person mention the rough/loose concept before. If you have experience in this field or figure you're pretty good at picking a good/bad idea and have a spare minute, can you email me? My details are in my profile.
cwilson 15y ago
Online dating sucks, and is hard to solve, because real-world dating sucks, and is hard to do, unless the following applies: - You're attractive - You're a social person - Both 1 and 2 You can be an attractive person, but shy, and still get dates pretty easily. You can be just average looking, but very social and outgoing, and still get dates pretty easily. If you have both, the world is likely your oyster. These types of people generally never visit dating websites, because they don't need to. With that in mind, we can conclude the following: - Dating websites are mostly full of people who do not apply to the list above (e.g. unattractive introverts). - There are still of course attractive and social people using these sites for various reasons, but they are the minority. - Some of those reasons that minority exists may be because they have "issues", and regardless of being attractive and/or social, have trouble maintaining lasting relationships offline. This means we have a mix of unattractive introverts not only mixing with each other, but mixing with attractive extroverts who are unstable in relationships. Then you have the "sausage fest" factor that has already been mentioned in the comments tossed into the mix, along with some dating websites simply being really, really bad (the only good one I can think of, which still has all of these problems, is OkCupid). This all sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. My theory on what might actually work, and how online dating needs to evolve: - In my experience, my best relationships have been a product of serendipity. You can filter through potential matches all you want, use data to try and find that perfect someone, but 9 times out of 10 when you actually meet, you'll feel absolutely no spark or connection, even if you both love all the same things. It's that spark that matters, and I've never experienced this through anything but a serendipitous encounter. - The actual problem is that we shouldn't be sitting in front of our computers looking for potential mates. We should be out finding them, in real life, where the interactions actually matter, and serendipity can do its thing. - This means we're trying to solve the WRONG problem. We're trying to make dating websites better. Instead, let's make it easier to get out of the house, and do the best we can to "engineer serendipity", or at least put you in situations where it's more likely to take place. - While I'm not going to plan out an entire solution here, it would likely involve some of the following: It has a mobile aspect, it involves overlapping friend circles (think degrees of separation, or how you'd meet a match at a wedding or dinner party), it involves social events and situations, and it's built in a way that is perceived as safe, non-creepy, and by people who understand real world social situations and complexities (i.e. not made by the introverts who can't date without a website). At the end of the day, we need a solution that helps you easily put yourself into social situations you wouldn't otherwise be in, and replicates what happens and actually works in the real world, without feeling creepy or forced.
Cyranix 15y ago
As a guy who met a girl on OkCupid and married her, I found the author's list of faults in existing online dating systems to be rather puzzling. Most of them seem like a) perils of dating in general or b) perils of interacting online in general -- problems that may not be solved by Yet Another Dating Site. > Fake pictures. People always try to game the system, and the realm of dating is no exception. It's not unheard of to create a fake Facebook account for casual social engineering. > Poor filtering. My personal experience doesn't match with this but YMMV. OkCupid has rather good filtering using not only quantitative data (e.g. location, age range, tagged interests) but also more qualitative data (e.g. question system). I suppose Match.com was somewhat less effective. > Can't tell who is actually interested. That's dating for you. Also, being direct isn't creepy unless you're directly being creepy. > Creating a profile is a huge pain. Probably the most legitimate beef with online dating. I found OkCupid pretty straightforward and well-incentivized, but YMMV. I wonder how indicative someone's Facebook profile is, though, of what they offer in a relationship; plenty of people have profiles brimming with the minutiae of daily life instead of statements about their fundamental beliefs and desires. > You may see someone you know. This doesn't have to be a huge deal. I saw two of my friends on OkCupid, one of whom I was romantically involved with previously. We had a good laugh about it and moved on. Don't buy into the assumed social stigma of online dating -- it's not the end of the world for someone to know you're putting yourself out there. > Data never disappears online. I didn't know what to make of this point, honestly. Don't people just delete/archive/ignore old messages? Is there some concern that these become public knowledge? > Rejection is painful, and there is more of it online. As another commenter has said, dating is a numbers game. Online dating increases exposure to potential dates, so rejection increases -- though (based on my experience and those of friends who have also done online dating) roughly in proportion to what is experienced with in-person dating. There's always a point in dating where someone can get rejected; it can actually be liberating to have small rejections up front instead of big rejections down the road (for several reasons, not least of which is the lost opportunity cost of the failed relationship). No matter how much a site tries to shelter a user, it can't last forever. [ See also Rejection Therapy discussed on HN: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%20therapy http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%2... ] > It just feels juvenile. OkCupid allows good flexibility in how you express yourself. The question system helps some people elaborate on topics that are particularly salient to their interests; other people are more comfortable writing short essays; still others are comfortable summing themselves up in a few bullet points. Also, on this count you've disregarded a crucial intermediate step between one's online profile and an in-person date: online messaging. The profile establishes interest, messaging confirms interest, in-person dates explore whether interest becomes a relationship. krausejj, I'd be interested to know which sites you've used to reach your conclusions -- and, sincerely, best of luck refining the concept and creating a successful product.
erikb 15y ago
Seeing that something sucks is not the important point. Everybody can do that. You must ask WHY, before working on solving your problems with the situation on hand. And I think the reason for dating sites being quite bad is not, that nobody sees the problems. It's just that there are way bigger problems that need to get solved first and when these problems are solved you don't need to solve any other problem anymore to be successful (at least in the short run). And the big problem of all social communities and market places (dating site is something of both in my eyes) is that you need get people to come in. If there are a lot of people, other's will come automatically. If there are no people, nobody will come. The software or the service quality is only a second rank problem. So I wonder, how do u solve the community problem first?
itmag 15y ago
My ideas on dating sites: http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-misc-dating-site-ideas http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-misc-dating-site-ideas http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-slideshow-audio-voiceovers http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-slideshow-a... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-improvement-team http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-improvem... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-gets-reluctant-female-s http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-gets-r... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-gamification http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-gamifi... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-dating-site http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-dating... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-did-well http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-did-w... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-female-helpers http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-fe... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-speed-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-speed-... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-adsense-for-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-adsense-for-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-for-search-result-pag http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-for-... (I just pulled this out of Google, so it's not sorted by awesomeness or anything).
georgieporgie 15y ago
Facebook was the best dating site ever invented, until they killed the ability to search on sex and relationship status within arbitrary networks. By the way, to my knowledge, nobody has tried peer-curated online dating. i.e. an interested friend does the awful work of searching and matching, forwards minimal details for approval from both parties, and coordinates the meeting. In other words, online dating which more closely approximates traditional social methods.
perlgeek 15y ago
IMHO the real problem with online dating is that it's explicit. You need to go hunting for others, set up your profile etc. Imagine a world where nobody is concerned about privacy. After a while, your search engine of choice infers from your search queries that you don't have a girlfriend, and occasionally shows you a message along side the result page, telling you about a girl who has search for several similar topics than you have, roughly your age and living not too far from you. She'll get a similar message, and if you both agree, a communication channel of some sort will be made available. Don't reject the idea as being creepy. It might sound creepy, but it could actually work. Search engines know a lot about you, and might find matches without you having to set up a profile, and mostly bypasses the incentive to lie in order to make you look more attractive. Oh and of course it wouldn't just work for dating, but also for finding friends in general. If I had a job at Google, I'd love to try my hand at prototyping such a thing.
- itmag 15y ago
  I would actually love a site that finds me male friends. I always need local people to do eg martial arts, hacking on projects, going out to sarge, discussing philosophy, etc.
arrakeen 15y ago
my response to the article and many of my friends who've had a similar experience with online dating boils down to 'ur doin it rong'. here are some tips: * CAREFULLY write your profile so that it will attract the kind of person you'd like to meet. be playful, fun, and funny. * DO NOT BE OVERLY SERIOUS: unfortunately there's still a bit of a social stigma against online dating so people are often already on their guard and will already be wary of everything they read. so keep the profile and messages light and playful. * okcupid has a great feature that lets you see who has visited your profile, use this to your advantage. you've already carefully written your profile to attract your ideal partner, so see who it's attracted. if someone has visited your profile a couple times already, the chances that they'd be receptive to a message are much higher * do not get hung up on a single person. "OMGZ my soulmate didn't reply to my message! IM FOREVER ALONE!!" well, if you two were truly compatible, don't you think they'd find your profile and message interesting? tl;dr be playful, have fun, and don't take yourself too seriously

127 points by krausejj 15y ago

Online dating does more than reduce "Hi, my name is" friction, it also allows you to find people who have rare attributes and personality traits you desire in a partner, before you make the commitment to spend money/time on a first date. Lists of interests and questionnaires are exactly what online dating does right and moving to Facebook would be a step backwards. EDIT: In other words, my Facebook profile is not a dating profile.

mhartl 15y ago

Am I missing anything? You're missing at least two things. Assuming (as is reasonable) that you're principally aiming at the heterosexual market, you face these issues: 1. Men and women are different. How do you address gender imbalances? 2. Not all women are equally appealing. How do you address attractive women being overwhelmed with male attention? Some may object that I didn't include "attractive men" in #2. See #1. In particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed with female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy it.)

krausejj 15y ago
interesting. i've read studies on how men are much more likely to make a decision on an online profile based mainly upon the photo, whereas women care more about interests and other content. this is definitely something to consider. I do feel like the public Facebook profile gives women some interesting information - mutual friends, education, and basic interests are all there. also, this is not principally aimed at heterosexuals - all orientations are welcome and i actually suspect that smaller groups like gay guys may find it more useful since these communities are smaller and filtering out current friends is more valuable.
jessriedel 15y ago
> In particular, even the most attractive men are virtually never overwhelmed with female attention on online dating sites. (Those who are probably enjoy it.) This is really interesting if true (which I think it probably is) because real life is the opposite, at least if you measure by sexual partners: by definition, the average number of partners for men and women (in a heterosexual population) is the same, but it turns out that the variance for men is much larger; a few many get many women and most men get few, while most women get a typical number of men.
- mhartl 15y ago
  You've got the wrong metric. The reason some men have lots of sexual partners is because many men want lots of sexual partners, and some have the ability to do so. On the other hand, most women of even mediocre attractiveness can have lots of sexual partners, but fewer of them want to. This is just as you would expect based on the relative energy investment men and women make in producing offspring. Other animals with similar asymmetries in energy investment have similar sexual behavior to humans. Incidentally, this observation puts the lie to the idea that having a stud/slut dichotomy is a "double standard". Having different standards for men and women makes sense; being a stud is hard, while being a slut is easy. Indeed, the vast majority of whining about "gender double standards" can be rebutted with the simple observation that men and women are different.

valladont 15y ago

Really not interested in having to put my sexual and relationship ideals up on facebook where friends and family can see them... Facebook is where I go to talk to people I do not want knowing a lot about my personal life.

ncavig 15y ago
Very good point. In addition, so many things cannot be represented digitally in dating/flirting. So much body language and unspoken signals go into reading of interest and intrigue between two people. Albeit my knowledge of dating sites are limited, it would seem being able to replicate unspoken communication is nearly impossible, especially when people are represented as images and text. Sorry for no citations, just a personal opinion based off of my history of reading a limited number of psych and body language books
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
krausejj 15y ago
This isn't how it works - it connects with Facebook so it can filter out your Facebook friends - the whole idea is that only new people who you don't know can see that you're single and looking to connect.
- mattdeboard 15y ago
  Except mutual friends see that you're now connected? I don't want Facebook touching my dating life, ever.
- valladont 15y ago
  This app connects to my facebook to check my friends and stuff, then I tell this app the stuff I am into sexually and romantically, and then it connects me to others on facebook who have the same interests, I get that. But the simple fact is, well, keep my romantic life out of my social life. If I want my romantic life and social life to intermix that will be my decision, not that of some webapp. There is a reason Dating Sites exist separated from Social Sites, and it is not because no one has thought of the idea before. Personal Preference: Ne'er the twain shall meet. Just to be clear, it is a good idea, but I personally would not trust that small a level of separation between social and romantic life. There may be a market in it, I am not a member of that demographic.

krausejj 15y ago

if anyone has any feedback - especially with regard to user acquisition or how to make this more viral, i'd really appreciate your ideas.

LokiSnake 15y ago
You're implementation still feels like a slight twist on what we've seen before. You list criteria which are used as filters, and you either show interest or don't. OKCupid is pretty much the same thing. Sure, you take away the profile filling, and uploading photos part, but it's still the same thing, but slightly different. Thing is, after a match is found, you don't solve the "well shit, what do I do now?" problem. You're back to awkward and possibly creepy part of messaging and setting something up. I remember seeing a very interesting idea for a dating website a while ago on HN, where you're matched based on activities/events you're interested in going to. I really liked the idea, as it matches based on interests, and it automatically answers the what-are-we-going-to-do question.
- natrius 15y ago
  Maybe this was the site you heard about: http://www.howaboutwe.com/ http://www.howaboutwe.com/ They've been doing a significant blast of advertising lately.
mmatants 15y ago
Some interesting ideas, for sure. I agree with the concept of streamlining things. But I strongly oppose the requirement of real-names-only. It should be possible to use FB for authentication/etc, but still maintain anonymity within the "matching pool". I think that this is the main issue with any online-based communication: it is an awful attempt to approximate talking to a person in real life. As a middle-ground solution, I think match sites should basically arrange for online games/experiences that show a person's reactions to things. That's how one truly shows their personality. I don't mean games in a traditional sense, either. Maybe rounds of some kind of live trivia with a twist, or whatever. So basically, nothing new. Just usual meet-market ideas, translated better into online-only experience. And of course the overall thing, too, is that it should be fun. The real goal is to enjoy the process, just like with meeting people in real life. It's so much better to just have fun with the overall journey of social interaction, rather than labour towards an abstract goal of filling a "mate" placeholder slot.

kristenlee 15y ago

The facebook thing is an absolute dealbreaker, what don't engineers understand about people not wanting to use facebook for everything? So annoying. If you want people to use real identities there are plenty of other ways to go about it, furthermore it is not that difficult to create a fake facebook profile, i have three myself.

jfarmer 15y ago
Are you kidding? Engineers are one of the most privacy-conscious demos out there, especially under 30. Just read any post on HN about any site that uses Facebook Connect. Half the comments will be about how they refuse to so much as look at that button. I disagree that going full-on-public is the right approach. For women, especially, they get bombarded with all kinds of creepiness. I think it'd be hard to get people to waive their right to hand out information at the pace they feel comfortable. Anything that alienates women from a dating site is a deal-breaker, IMO. The dating sites that do well are the ones that can attract and retain female users. That said, there's a kernel of an interesting idea here. The process of dating is revealing increasingly intimate details about ones life. If you reach a point where it feels uncomfortable, you break up. For the "online" portion of online dating, e.g., sending messages back and forth on OKC, this is very explicit. Guy sends girl a message. Girl responds. Guy reveals name. Girl reveals name. etc. Until eventually contact information is exchanged, and then you arrange an offline date. So the "core" problem of online dating is one of building comfort. One Facebook-powered feature that could build comfort might be to show how many friends you have in common (but not who). Another might be to show where your Facebook likes intersect. But forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really runs against the grain of the whole idea of dating.
- krausejj 15y ago
  regarding "forcing people to reveal all their information immediately really runs against the grain of the whole idea of dating" -- in most cases, the public Facebook profile is hardly "all my information," and sites like OKCupid that do online dating the "traditional" way are already out there. this is an alternative - for people who want to try going against the grain.

therandomguy 15y ago

I wonder if people will find dating and facebook too close for comfort.

kanwisher 15y ago

The list of reasons doesn't seem well thought out, rejection is part of the dating experience, I would think its much worse in real life when someone ignores you then simply just not responding to an email. I really wouldnt want to tie this to facebook for the reason of stalkers and weirdos now have personal contact with me. I would prefer to keep my dating life seperate.

Vermeulen 15y ago

I think this is pretty brilliant, the ease of use and simplicity - but the fundamental problem is the requirement on Facebook. Even if your not posting on user's wall trying to spread the site I think people will still be hesitant to connect their Facebook profile to a dating site, Facebook is just too personal for something that most people would prefer to be done anonymously. Not that there is anyway around that, since Facebook gives so many other benefits for this idea

phzbOx 15y ago

Every time I pitch startup ideas to my gf, she always tells me it sucks and gives me great reasons.. but the other day, I had this idea about dating website and she kinda liked it even though she would never want me to work on something like that. Instead of trying to use the Internet to solve a problem that is better solved in real-life (i.e. meet people and talk), why not create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. Basically, it's a game where you put the profile picture you'd like to have, and the 'about me' you'd like to be. So, you talk with lots of strangers and avoid the awkard thingy while still having fun and meeting people. Of course, after some time, it will naturally start to be more intimate and it'd be possible to share more real stuff.. but that's not even necessary. Think about all the guys and girls in couple who'd like to have fun dating again but can't because they're already in relationship? Or single players who just want to have fun? Here it is. It's rough around the edges but I hope it inspire someone.

juiceandjuice 15y ago
I hated playing The Sims.
sanswork 15y ago
Sounds like secondlife.
lsb 15y ago
That sounds like a pretty cool idea, create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. People have implemented that in meat-space as the city of San Francisco. If people find that the rest of their life tugs on them, perhaps you could sell an all-in-one escape month? It'd be perfect for the baby boomer who wants to try one month at not being the same person. Just take care of all necessary daily/weekly/monthly chores for a month. (Obvious expansion into doing people's chores for them, pairing with tourism boards, etc.)
paulhauggis 15y ago
"Instead of trying to use the Internet to solve a problem that is better solved in real-life (i.e. meet people and talk), why not create a whole fiction world where you can be anything you want. Basically, it's a game where you put the profile picture you'd like to have, and the 'about me' you'd like to be. So, you talk with lots of strangers and avoid the awkard thingy while still having fun and meeting people." This might work for an online game, but not for dating. I've used many of major online dating sites over the years and one of the things that bothers me the most is people mis-representing themselves. It usually leads to awkward situations and hurt feelings. This is why I try to get a phone number and meet in person as soon as possible. Your game would have this built-in and only make the situation worse (as far as dating goes).

shalmanese 15y ago

Here's the real reason why online dating sucks: 1. The only good sites are the ones your potential mate is on. Size is a bigger feature than any you can design. 2. If your site sucks, then people get frustrated and everyone leaves. If your site is great, then people get paired off and everyone leaves. Online dating doesn't just suffer from network effects, it suffers from second order network effects. Unless you're getting a constant stream of new customers into your site every day, your site will fail. All innovation in online dating comes from the customer acquisition side, not the product side. If you manage to figure out an innovative new form of customer acquisition, you can make a go at creating a viable new entrant to the market. If you can't, it doesn't matter how good your product is, you will fail.

krausejj 15y ago
fascinating, thanks for this insight. this rings very true. do you have any good ideas for customer acquisition? my only devil's advocate response would be that if a site delivers very well and people start hearing about people who successfully met on that site (and there isn't a stigma admitting it), then this could drive new users....
- gbhn 15y ago
  crawl facebook?
  - krausejj 15y ago
    this is actually pretty tough. facebook has really tightened things up with regards to privacy and it's api - certainly a good thing for users but you'll notice you rarely see apps all over people's walls like a few years back - it is much harder to do and always requires onerous permissions.
unawz 15y ago
There's a solution to that problem - peer to peer - as in file-sharing. Create software that sits on each persons computer. This is freely downloadable. Users input as much information as they want into it, and it reaches out and grabs other users' data like file-sharing, and filters it to any sort of criteria. This solves the chicken and egg problem. People can make money on this by offering hosting services. It can be a hassle for the average user to run and update the software on their computer so many might opt to pay for a cloud service. This model can also be used for business discovery. Google and ebay can only do so much, you might want complex querying and reporting. edit: The software solution can be as simple as publishing rdf data. The Protege ontology editor (open source) is already available. Users could simply start publishing their data profile right away, and conventions would form around what you should be putting in it. Protege also has querying facilities built in already. This was actually the semantic web vision.

LaGrange 15y ago

Real names? Never. It's way too easy to get a stalker even if you're initially anonymous. It would be just dangerous to use a dating site like that, especially once you add that location function into it. Messages are a pretty important part of the online dating thing. Same thing with profiles. How someone reacted to your profile, how someone presents themselves, all that is really important when looking for people you'd like to talk with. And, personally, I have written quite a few messages on OKC, and never a canned one. Even if someone didn't answer, I hope I provided a bit of entertainment or amusement. Now, the fact that OKC does thing like showing you profiles of people across the globe even if they're not interested with interacting with someone they might never meet – that's annoying.

sudoscience 15y ago

My best advice is to reword the filtering section. The fact that you need to outline in red that it might work differently than people expect is a good clue that it is too hard to understand. Other than that I think this is really nicely done and a great idea. However, apparently there are no 20-40 year old girls in Seattle yet. :)

m0nastic 15y ago

The rash of online dating startups always strikes me as a misguided use of people's efforts. I can appreciate that people think there's something they can contribute to it, and that they see it as a really positive win for social interaction (and I think people should work on what they want to work on). But the thing is, dating sucks. Full stop. And online dating is merely trying to slightly reduce the friction for the very tiniest part at the very beginning of it. It seems to miss the whole fundamental reason why online dating is hard, which is that dating is hard, and not easily abstracted. Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people.

maratd 15y ago
> Online dating is a misnomer, it's basically just online meeting of people. Bingo. Now, here's an interesting question. If you're a profit seeking entity that charges monthly rates for introducing people and you want to increase your take, how do you do it? You need to keep them wanting to meet more people. As in, you do not want them to find somebody they really like or they'll no longer want to meet other people. In other words, there is a huge profit motive for you to keep the experience mediocre. Not terrible enough for you to leave, but also not great enough for you to leave with someone you like. There is a huge motive for mediocrity. BTW I met my wife who is sitting next to me, pregnant with our first kid, on an online dating site. It took me two years and about a hundred first dates. That's after using every filtering mechanism provided to me by the site. It was an avalanche of mediocrity. Good enough to keep you going, but bad enough to keep going.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Sheesh, that's a first date every weekend for two years. Sounds like a side job more than anything else!
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    The idea is to try to schedule a date nearly every night, except the special D&D night or whatever special event. Women flake enough that you'll have nights to yourself, and you'll appreciate it!

leeb 15y ago

> You see real names This would be a complete dealbreaker for me, even without all the other things that this service would share from my profile. I would never want there to be an easy way for people from the dating site to be able to find me on another site - you can shut down a dating profile or discontinuing using the service if someone's bothering you, but with this it sounds like complete strangers would be able to find/message me on Facebook outside of the site's control, and I wouldn't want to stop using Facebook because of some creeper. And if it's using publicly available Facebook data, it means I need to make a ton of my information public and accessible for the service to be useful. That's not really worth the risk of using the service to me, and is probably why you don't frequently see dating sites that reveal full names/near-exact locations as you're suggesting. If you can find a way to display Facebook profile details without revealing the person's full name, you'd probably have more luck recruiting people.

krausejj 15y ago
Essentially, the only data available given the "basic" settings on Facebook is name and friends. Your name is already out there all over Facebook - friends of friends, random people in groups you're part of, people going to your events - they can all see it... why is it different to give your real name to a (real) person who matches very specific criteria that you set yourself, and which basically just signifies "I'm Single, and you may be a match" ?
- xp84 15y ago
  > Your name is already out there all over Facebook - friends of friends, random people in groups you're part of Yeah, and even that exposure can be a pile of hurt when it comes to stalkers, creeps and weirdos. I have to say I don't see the value in real names being visible to people on the dating site unless I choose to share that. The site should let you choose a pseudonym, full stop. This said, I don't rule out the idea of signing up for this site. But I'm a male, so I don't have nearly the level of concern as women do, and rightfully so. There are creeps who devote way too much effort to tracking down chicks and harassing them--or worse. It's sickening.
- 15y ago

stevenj 15y ago

The dating space is interesting. I think it's ripe for disruption. But thus far I haven't been able to figure out how to attack it, let alone where to start. I think YC was right when it said you have to concentrate on solving the chicken-and-egg problem. "...anyone who wants to start a dating startup has to answer two questions: in addition to the usual question about how you're going to approach dating differently, you have to answer the even more important question of how to overcome the huge chicken and egg problem every dating site faces. A site like Reddit is interesting when there are only 20 users. But no one wants to use a dating site with only 20 users—which of course becomes a self-perpetuating problem. So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem." If you're passionate about building an online dating site, I'd spend all of my time iterating ways to get users. Try a bunch of different ideas. And fail fast. #8 http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

xp84 15y ago
Yeah but on a dating site with 20 users you could conceivably bang EVERY GIRL ON THE SITE! Achievement Unlocked! ;)
- fatjokes 15y ago
  On a site with 20 users, they'd probably all be male.
unawz 15y ago
My other comment about peer-to-peer solves the chicken and egg problem.

krausejj 15y ago

the male to female ratio on Circl.es just swung wildly towards the males since launching on HN (it had been primarily female). hacker girls - you have very good odds right now!

jarek 15y ago
Hacker girls have been unsuccessfully looking for online dating sites with "very good odds" forever, to be sure.

jtokoph 15y ago

I love the bashing of this idea in the comments. Everyone saying that they wouldn't want to use a website like this. What they don't realize is that the simple choice of which service they use can act as a filter. For instance: I wouldn't want to date you privacy freaks and you wouldn't want to date me. Already filtered down the sea of singles by just signing up.

theblogdoctor 15y ago

Hey Kraus, I checked out circl.es, nice clean look, but 1st impressions, in 2 seconds, is that it is a travel site. Because all I see is buildings and maps. No faces :( If you are building a dating site, at the very least, you need a few faces, and "last login" "2 minutes ago" "yesterday" etc....

iza 15y ago

I'm slightly offended that you combined Socialist with Fascist in the political views section.

Robin_Message 15y ago
(This is off-topic, and I see how it is slightly offensive, but the biggest Fascist party, the Nazis, called themselves "National Socialists". And in terms of the effects — for example, the gulags, war-like nature and authoritarian rule, they appear quite similar. Now I assume you are the good kind of socialist, that wants good for all (e.g. modern Europe), rather than bad kind (e.g. the USSR), (and I agree with you) so I can see why you would want to distance yourself from the Fascists, but historically they are similar.) On topic: Can I expect more or less dates if I put my political views as Fascist...?
krausejj 15y ago
I agree that this should be changed. I will look into it!

swang 15y ago

First off, you need women on your dating site. That's it. Just like bars, you don't need to target guys, they will just go where the women also are. I'm not a girl, but the top reasons that I hear about from girls in regards to online dating. 1) there's still a stigma about online dating that some girls won't get over. 2) too many "creeps" who message them. 3) they fear they are getting "played" or are getting a message from someone who just spams the same message. 4) they get way too many messages to sort through. In fact most girls try to set up filters, "Don't message me if you can't spell or if you don't know the difference between, 'your' and 'you're'". Honestly though I find it hard to believe that girls are that concerned with spelling. I, as a guy, have to deal with having to prove to girls that I'm not creepy, or spamming message, and on top of that have to message them something to catch their attention. Personally, it's even worse for me when the girl has nothing at all in her profile for me to ask them about. So what I suggest is, automatically filter out "hey whats up gurl" messages for women. Conversely also filter out any messages that are more than 2 paragraphs in length. Show women pictures and have them rate the pictures by whether or not they would date said person then algorithmically find people on the site that look similar to pictures she favored. I'm trying to think of some more, but basically make it easier for girls to filter out people they would never date. And somehow make it easier for the guy to know that the girl has some interest in him, besides weird, "winks" and icebreakers.

minikomi 15y ago
How about a site where guys / girls set up challenges that guys have to perform in order to be able to contact them? * Write a 250 word essay about your favorite british guitar pop * Make a video of you cooking something using pumpkin (my favorite) * Write me a song using the words panda and musk rat, and about Michigan (bonus points for name dropping the coffee shop with the best cheesecake in town - you'll know it if you've been) etc.
- fatbat 15y ago
  Hmmm I like this idea. Are there any that implements this so far? Maybe something I can look into. :)
15y ago

unobfuscate 15y ago

My advice, make the facebook connect a feature, not a requirement. I know this is no simple change, but you would get a lot of buy-in if you sell it as a value add. "Setup your account! Don't want your friends to see your profile? click here! Want to see more people? Click here!" So people connected through facebook can see everyone (minus their friends), and people who aren't can only see others who are not. Keep pushing them on facebook connect, when they do a search, tell them how many people they are missing out on! (3 results, 98 results if you click here!)

nhashem 15y ago

Online dating is a sausagefest. It's the biggest sausagefest ever. I'm not basing this on any scientific or quantitative information at all, just my own personal experiences from online dating from 2004-2008, the end of which was when I met my now-fiancee. The "sausagefest syndrome" is inherently why so many online dating sites suck. Guys sign up and get barely any responses to their profiles or messages. Girls sign up and get immediately overwhelmed with messages, some interesting but the rest mostly boring or creepy. Guys get frustrated at the lack of traction and leave. Girls get overwhelmed by too much attention and leave. It doesn't help when the online dating sites start using fake profiles and pictures to give the false illusion it's not a sausagefest. I've seen friends sign up for Match.com and be like, "this sucks, they have no matches for me," and then I find they're looking for half-Asian half-Russian college-educated non-smoking dog-owners in a 2.5 mile radius, or something like that. That's almost guaranteed to not work. Unfortunately the alternative is some sort of "shotgun strategy," which if done poorly, means sending a message to 50 girls with the same copy-pasted canned sentences, which only contributes to the women being overwhelmed. You still need to aim the shotgun. I effectively had a routine where I'd spend an evening looking through profiles, only ruling out absolute deal-breakers, and then sent a message that while mostly short, at least made some reference to the actual girl. Out of 20 messages I'd get like 5 responses, which would lead to 2 phone calls, and probably 1 actual date. Rinse, repeat. Yeah, it's kind of annoying to fill out a profile and all that, but to me that's never been the problem. I feel there's a lot more social friction to get women to sign up for these sites, because while online dating to guys is basically, "well, why not, it's another possible way to meet girls," to girls it's, "this is admitting I am incompetent at/undeserving of finding love." Until that's overcome, online dating will always be a poor experience for a lot of people that try it. How do you overcome it? In a drunken night with friends a couple months ago, I started rambling about an online dating site that embraced the male-female disparity, and basically would pair up something like 3-4 guys to every girl, and set up dates where you'd all go out like "The Bachelorette." There's a lot of reasons why that idea would be a hard sell, but if anyone ever does successfully do it, just make sure to give me my cut[0]. [0] http://xkcd.com/827/ http://xkcd.com/827/

jeromegn 15y ago
I was surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article because this is, to me, the biggest issue with dating sites: too many guys, too many messages to women. I've seen some of my friends (women) sign up and get messages within an hour. Even with a barely filled profile.

donall 15y ago

A minor point: when filling out my political orientation, I noticed that "socialist/fascist" was an option. I really don't want to start a debate, but I think these should be separate. It seems in the US they are often both considered equally dangerous extremes, but in the rest of the world, there is a pretty significant distinction between the two camps.

krausejj 15y ago
maybe just change it to socialist only?
itmag 15y ago
Yeah, that made me chuckle. The USA is pretty quaint sometimes. Then again, to us euros, all Americans are worldview-challenged religious fundamentalists who mock dying poor people in the streets while brandishing an Uzi in one hand and a quadruple cheeseburger in the other. So it goes both ways.

discountgenius 15y ago

I had a very, very similar idea (but with more facebook integration) less than two weeks ago. I'm glad it's already built. Now we just need some girls to join...

MBlume 15y ago

I don't understand why you're so determined to hide my friends. I like my friends. I might conceivably want to date some of them, and in any case, I'd like to show them my profile for con-crit. Is there a way to turn the "feature" off?

krausejj 15y ago
I considered that but I figured if you already know someone and like them, you should just ask them out in person.

kingkawn 15y ago

I've had a pretty good experience with Internet dating. I've met a lot of women, become really good friends with some, had brief flings and long term girlfriends. They all are deluged with messages from creeps, but that really shouldn't impact men who aren't creeps. Many reject me, but who cares? That's true in general. I dont want life to be softer on me, I just want to go HAM on life. If you're not satisfied with the Internet hit the grocery store checkout line.

tsunamifury 15y ago

I can never get over the fact that online dating will always be a very distant second to meeting people in real life. Why don't more sites stop trying to force some artificial romance virtually and study how to get groups of people to meet in person and foster relationships.

prawn 15y ago

I have an idea in this space that I'd be keen to get feedback on. Have only ever seen one person mention the rough/loose concept before. If you have experience in this field or figure you're pretty good at picking a good/bad idea and have a spare minute, can you email me? My details are in my profile.

cwilson 15y ago

Online dating sucks, and is hard to solve, because real-world dating sucks, and is hard to do, unless the following applies: - You're attractive - You're a social person - Both 1 and 2 You can be an attractive person, but shy, and still get dates pretty easily. You can be just average looking, but very social and outgoing, and still get dates pretty easily. If you have both, the world is likely your oyster. These types of people generally never visit dating websites, because they don't need to. With that in mind, we can conclude the following: - Dating websites are mostly full of people who do not apply to the list above (e.g. unattractive introverts). - There are still of course attractive and social people using these sites for various reasons, but they are the minority. - Some of those reasons that minority exists may be because they have "issues", and regardless of being attractive and/or social, have trouble maintaining lasting relationships offline. This means we have a mix of unattractive introverts not only mixing with each other, but mixing with attractive extroverts who are unstable in relationships. Then you have the "sausage fest" factor that has already been mentioned in the comments tossed into the mix, along with some dating websites simply being really, really bad (the only good one I can think of, which still has all of these problems, is OkCupid). This all sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. My theory on what might actually work, and how online dating needs to evolve: - In my experience, my best relationships have been a product of serendipity. You can filter through potential matches all you want, use data to try and find that perfect someone, but 9 times out of 10 when you actually meet, you'll feel absolutely no spark or connection, even if you both love all the same things. It's that spark that matters, and I've never experienced this through anything but a serendipitous encounter. - The actual problem is that we shouldn't be sitting in front of our computers looking for potential mates. We should be out finding them, in real life, where the interactions actually matter, and serendipity can do its thing. - This means we're trying to solve the WRONG problem. We're trying to make dating websites better. Instead, let's make it easier to get out of the house, and do the best we can to "engineer serendipity", or at least put you in situations where it's more likely to take place. - While I'm not going to plan out an entire solution here, it would likely involve some of the following: It has a mobile aspect, it involves overlapping friend circles (think degrees of separation, or how you'd meet a match at a wedding or dinner party), it involves social events and situations, and it's built in a way that is perceived as safe, non-creepy, and by people who understand real world social situations and complexities (i.e. not made by the introverts who can't date without a website). At the end of the day, we need a solution that helps you easily put yourself into social situations you wouldn't otherwise be in, and replicates what happens and actually works in the real world, without feeling creepy or forced.

Cyranix 15y ago

As a guy who met a girl on OkCupid and married her, I found the author's list of faults in existing online dating systems to be rather puzzling. Most of them seem like a) perils of dating in general or b) perils of interacting online in general -- problems that may not be solved by Yet Another Dating Site. > Fake pictures. People always try to game the system, and the realm of dating is no exception. It's not unheard of to create a fake Facebook account for casual social engineering. > Poor filtering. My personal experience doesn't match with this but YMMV. OkCupid has rather good filtering using not only quantitative data (e.g. location, age range, tagged interests) but also more qualitative data (e.g. question system). I suppose Match.com was somewhat less effective. > Can't tell who is actually interested. That's dating for you. Also, being direct isn't creepy unless you're directly being creepy. > Creating a profile is a huge pain. Probably the most legitimate beef with online dating. I found OkCupid pretty straightforward and well-incentivized, but YMMV. I wonder how indicative someone's Facebook profile is, though, of what they offer in a relationship; plenty of people have profiles brimming with the minutiae of daily life instead of statements about their fundamental beliefs and desires. > You may see someone you know. This doesn't have to be a huge deal. I saw two of my friends on OkCupid, one of whom I was romantically involved with previously. We had a good laugh about it and moved on. Don't buy into the assumed social stigma of online dating -- it's not the end of the world for someone to know you're putting yourself out there. > Data never disappears online. I didn't know what to make of this point, honestly. Don't people just delete/archive/ignore old messages? Is there some concern that these become public knowledge? > Rejection is painful, and there is more of it online. As another commenter has said, dating is a numbers game. Online dating increases exposure to potential dates, so rejection increases -- though (based on my experience and those of friends who have also done online dating) roughly in proportion to what is experienced with in-person dating. There's always a point in dating where someone can get rejected; it can actually be liberating to have small rejections up front instead of big rejections down the road (for several reasons, not least of which is the lost opportunity cost of the failed relationship). No matter how much a site tries to shelter a user, it can't last forever. [ See also Rejection Therapy discussed on HN: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%20therapy http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=rejection%2... ] > It just feels juvenile. OkCupid allows good flexibility in how you express yourself. The question system helps some people elaborate on topics that are particularly salient to their interests; other people are more comfortable writing short essays; still others are comfortable summing themselves up in a few bullet points. Also, on this count you've disregarded a crucial intermediate step between one's online profile and an in-person date: online messaging. The profile establishes interest, messaging confirms interest, in-person dates explore whether interest becomes a relationship. krausejj, I'd be interested to know which sites you've used to reach your conclusions -- and, sincerely, best of luck refining the concept and creating a successful product.

erikb 15y ago

Seeing that something sucks is not the important point. Everybody can do that. You must ask WHY, before working on solving your problems with the situation on hand. And I think the reason for dating sites being quite bad is not, that nobody sees the problems. It's just that there are way bigger problems that need to get solved first and when these problems are solved you don't need to solve any other problem anymore to be successful (at least in the short run). And the big problem of all social communities and market places (dating site is something of both in my eyes) is that you need get people to come in. If there are a lot of people, other's will come automatically. If there are no people, nobody will come. The software or the service quality is only a second rank problem. So I wonder, how do u solve the community problem first?

itmag 15y ago

My ideas on dating sites: http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-misc-dating-site-ideas http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-misc-dating-site-ideas http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-slideshow-audio-voiceovers http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-slideshow-a... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-improvement-team http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-profile-improvem... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-gets-reluctant-female-s http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-that-gets-r... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-gamification http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-with-gamifi... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-dating-site http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-walk-in-my-shoes-dating... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-did-well http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-my-dating-profile-did-w... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-female-helpers http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-dating-site-staff-of-fe... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-speed-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-smartphone-video-speed-... http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-adsense-for-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-adsense-for-dating http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-for-search-result-pag http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-photo-album-widget-for-... (I just pulled this out of Google, so it's not sorted by awesomeness or anything).

georgieporgie 15y ago

Facebook was the best dating site ever invented, until they killed the ability to search on sex and relationship status within arbitrary networks. By the way, to my knowledge, nobody has tried peer-curated online dating. i.e. an interested friend does the awful work of searching and matching, forwards minimal details for approval from both parties, and coordinates the meeting. In other words, online dating which more closely approximates traditional social methods.

perlgeek 15y ago

IMHO the real problem with online dating is that it's explicit. You need to go hunting for others, set up your profile etc. Imagine a world where nobody is concerned about privacy. After a while, your search engine of choice infers from your search queries that you don't have a girlfriend, and occasionally shows you a message along side the result page, telling you about a girl who has search for several similar topics than you have, roughly your age and living not too far from you. She'll get a similar message, and if you both agree, a communication channel of some sort will be made available. Don't reject the idea as being creepy. It might sound creepy, but it could actually work. Search engines know a lot about you, and might find matches without you having to set up a profile, and mostly bypasses the incentive to lie in order to make you look more attractive. Oh and of course it wouldn't just work for dating, but also for finding friends in general. If I had a job at Google, I'd love to try my hand at prototyping such a thing.

itmag 15y ago
I would actually love a site that finds me male friends. I always need local people to do eg martial arts, hacking on projects, going out to sarge, discussing philosophy, etc.

arrakeen 15y ago

my response to the article and many of my friends who've had a similar experience with online dating boils down to 'ur doin it rong'. here are some tips: * CAREFULLY write your profile so that it will attract the kind of person you'd like to meet. be playful, fun, and funny. * DO NOT BE OVERLY SERIOUS: unfortunately there's still a bit of a social stigma against online dating so people are often already on their guard and will already be wary of everything they read. so keep the profile and messages light and playful. * okcupid has a great feature that lets you see who has visited your profile, use this to your advantage. you've already carefully written your profile to attract your ideal partner, so see who it's attracted. if someone has visited your profile a couple times already, the chances that they'd be receptive to a message are much higher * do not get hung up on a single person. "OMGZ my soulmate didn't reply to my message! IM FOREVER ALONE!!" well, if you two were truly compatible, don't you think they'd find your profile and message interesting? tl;dr be playful, have fun, and don't take yourself too seriously